Perceived electability will play a key role in the Democratic primaries, as many voters may chose to back Sen. John Kerry (Mass) because he has been touted as the candidate with the best chance of defeating President Bush.
Don Eggert, chair of Students for Kerry, believes Kerry’s early successes in the primaries have caused students to take a second look at the Democratic candidates.
“Students realize that Kerry is in fact the best candidate to run in November,” he said.
However, Shira Roza, co-chair of Students for Dean, believes students will vote based on which candidate cares about them the most.
“Dean is the only one who has been to campus,” she said. “He’s the only one with a really solid platform that is pro-students and pro-education.”
Although many say voting based on electability means Madison’s campus has become more conservative, Ryan Grady, head of College Democrats in Madison, said, “I don’t think this conservative tie to youth that the media has come up with lately holds any truth.”
One explanation for this is that young voters embrace the dominant politics of the time when they are coming of age.
“Now with Bush in office, it has probably driven students to be a little more Republican,” said UW political science professor Charles Franklin.
But Daniel Nussbaum, a UW political science major, believes UW is still a strongly liberal campus.
“People tend to equate liberalism with action, so when there are not frequent protests or rallies, you start to hear that a town or a generation is less liberal,” he said.
Rudy Rosen, a UW sophomore, thinks the liberal portion of the student population is helping to keep the liberal attitudes that characterize Madison.
“I just see a lot of moderate students becoming more active,” Rosen said, adding she will not use her vote for a candidate likely to lose but instead for “the best legitimate candidate.”
In contrast, Jonny Jerome, a UW sophomore, said, “I would rather lose the election by voting for my candidate than win it with someone that I don’t want to see in power.”
Some experts argue that whenever a party faces an incumbent president, either Democrat or Republican, considerable pressure is put on the challenging party to choose an electable candidate.
“Usually it doesn’t succeed, but people vote in that way,” Franklin said. “To the extent that it is unusual this year, the parties have chosen to move up the primaries so it would impel a quick decision and a winner would emerge pretty quickly.”
The Democratic National Committee moved the primary election dates up in order to speed the candidate-selection process and get the party behind one candidate as soon as possible.
“Since Iowa there has been at least one primary election every week,” Franklin said. “This has been the force pushing Kerry, and his image of being electable gets built on every week, but it was intended to do that. It’s not an accident.”